Tim Whitworth

Tim Whitworth

  • Commented on Schadenfreude
    Well, I had 17 bitcoins in mtgox, which has a current notional value of around 5kpounds. Or I could just call them the 100 pounds I spent to get them. I don't like this, my strategy was to have some...
  • Commented on Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire
    (breaking SHA256) I tried years ago when bitcoin was worth cents per unit. It's not that easy....
  • Commented on PSA: Why there won't be a third book in the Halting State trilogy
    I'm not sure that avoiding having to break public key is a clear sign that their quantum computers don't do much good. There are plenty of reasons why the NSA would continue to attempt to hack by non-quantum means, including...
  • Commented on PSA: Why there won't be a third book in the Halting State trilogy
    I think all this information collection will prove interesting. People don't like it, but as automated comprehension improves, I could see there being an economic case for sharing it with your employer. Currently, they want your facebook password, so they're...
  • Commented on What scared H. P. Lovecraft
    What about Arthur C Clarke's 2001 series? That's dealing with contact with the intelligent artifacts of a post-singularity (and post-post-singularity) civilisation....
  • Commented on A deceptively simple question
    I think self driving cars and trucks are likely to emphasize existing trends more than create their own, they're not that different from drivable cars and trucks. Proposed trends: 1) Everybody fights - the logistical infrastructure needs fewer and fewer...
  • Commented on The latest news
    Logging into a single account and saving emails in the draft folder is secure unless that account has been compromised or your connection to the account is compromised. This actually has better security characteristics than encrypted emails....
  • Commented on The latest news
    It's all very well saying that if the US telecoms industry wanted the NSA out they could have the secret bugging rooms destroyed, but the executives that made those decisions could be put in prison over that. It's not a...
  • Commented on The latest news
    So, rather than saying you can't turn off the censorship system, why not just have the turn off fail? I can't turn of the censorship system for my phone....
  • Commented on On Syria
    Saudi Arabia might well dislike anything that would cause the US to withdraw its support. Something that would look bad in the American news might be a worry....
  • Commented on The next moves in the Spooks v. News cold war
    I think something that has been missed in this conversation is that the spooks here look like they think they are right. Not merely happening to be in the right, but really, blazingly right. As if people should listen because...
  • Commented on The next moves in the Spooks v. News cold war
    A good goal to aim for would be the total abolition of violence and coercion at all levels, by every human being, period. I'm not sure that's right actually. If there were no punishment for crimes, I think we...
  • Commented on Who ordered *that*?
    I'm not at all sure that this new police state isn't a response to encryption. People have been talking about taking control of the economy and society away from governments for decades now, what if someone heard them?...
  • Commented on Who ordered *that*?
    The global elite will rule over us with levels of wealth never seen before I'm not so sure, since they are really taking the education system out of the affordability range of ordinary people, they may break the economy...
  • Commented on Monarchy versus the Panopticon
    No, I don't think that picking people out by their appearance will work, there will be too many people who look just like him. I'd be more worried about picking such images out of the facebook photos of people who...
  • Commented on Monarchy versus the Panopticon
    I was thinking he'd have his own social media accounts, and that these would be the go-to sites for the latest heir, but I think they wouldn't want to compromise their relationship with the media. However, they could always be...
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    I'm not seeing these trade offs you mention. Who is getting glbt marriage instead of millions of lives in the middle east?...
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    We're still talking about gonzo solutions - hitting the "dissident punish" button, fighting drones. I don't think these will happen. I'd be more worried about technologies that don't have lethal consequences, such as drones with tasers attatched, or some way...
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    excesses of power that would be moderated by a self-aware imperial power go unchecked. I think you may be being optimistic there, imperial powers do not have a good record on human rights....
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    I think the inertia is in the beliefs of the people, which are slow to change. To create change, you need to change the minds of the populace....
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    Whether the surveillance system will spot a specific pattern amongst other patterns depends very much on the rate of progress in machine learning algorithms. Is it possible to look people up once you've decided to look at them. To find...
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    I'd be more worried about the development of techniques to marginalize people than the drones, and I think some technique to deal with that is more likely than a violent revolution. People revolt when they can't eat, not when they...
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    I don't think that smart weapons are going to be a major advance over hand weapons, you can still do everything with hand weapons that you can with smart weapons. I'm sure finger sized drones are possible, but you can't...
  • Commented on A Bad Dream
    They're going to sell the student loan books, with a substantial increase in the interest rate. The interests of my sort of people are not being looked after. Finger sized drones are probably a rather developed form, I'd guess about...
  • Commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
    Why do you say that's not the most likely of worlds? I can't see some sort of society with ai being a technologically stable plateau kind of place....
  • Commented on Grand Guignol Tropes
    "In the news today: spiders in your toothpaste. It has today been discovered that a toothpaste factory in Bangladesh has been overrun by mats of venomous spiders, and an unknown number of minty fresh toothpaste tubes have been sent out...
  • Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
    On the notion that we're unlikely to face any nuclear threat in the near future, how much warning did Iraq have that it was going to be invaded and "democratized"? A few years at most. How long would it take...
  • Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
    Does North Korea actually have the money to take substantial positions in the derivatives markets? The GDP of North Korea is about $40billion according to wikipedia....
  • Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
    You don't have to mention that the turbocharged metabolism turbocharges their aggression, because you've shown in in awe....
  • Commented on Wow
    All that yield, and nobody heard....
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